1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of writing information to optical media, and more particularly to a method and system for setting optical drive write strategies for writing information to optical media.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An increasingly popular media for storing information is writable and re-writable optical media, such as CD and DVD disks. Greater consumer demand for writable optical media has led to a greater number of manufacturers of writable optical media and an effort by these manufacturers to improve optical media write speeds by developing new variations in dye formulation and manufacturing parameters. Optical drives store information on these optical media by illuminating an optical medium disk with a focused laser beam that alters the reflective properties of the medium. The information is read from the optical medium by illumination of the medium with a lower powered laser and by measuring the reflectivity of the optical medium. Optical drive manufacturers attempt to store information on optical media to meet standards that require write attempts to be reasonably free from errors. In order to have reasonable writing accuracy, optical drive manufacturers often develop separate write strategies for each type of optical medium. A write strategy is a combination of write parameters, such as write laser power, pulse shape, pulse width, etc . . . , that permit the optical drive to write to a disk with an acceptable number of errors. Typically, optical drives identify an inserted disk by type and manufacturer from an identification code embedded on the disk by the manufacturer. The optical drive then selects a write strategy for the disk from a stored list of write strategies and applies the selected write strategy to write the information onto the disk.
One difficulty faced by optical drive manufacturers is maintaining the list of write strategies on an optical drive so that optical media developed after the optical drive is in use can have a write strategy added to the list. Write strategies are typically bundled in drive firmware unseparated from executable code. One solution is for information handling system manufacturers to update optical drive firmware with a current write strategy list immediately before shipping the information handling system to a customer. However, updating a write strategy list generally involves a costly and time consuming re-flash of firmware since changes to executable code must generally be confirmed before shipment, and updating a list at shipment does not address write strategies developed after shipment of the information handling system. Another solution used by optical drive manufacturers is to have a non-optimized generic write strategy available for optical medium disks having an identification code not included in the optical drive write strategy list. However, a generic write strategy typically results in reduced write quality and write speed. Another solution is to post drive firmware with an updated list of write strategies for download to the optical drive, such as at an Internet site, although users generally must know of and access such downloadable firmware and such updates generally require a re-flash of firmware.